


After Midnight

by awygtsan27



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Bluesey - Freeform, F/M, M/M, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 01:23:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4647060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awygtsan27/pseuds/awygtsan27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gansey admits his feelings for Blue and Adam coaxes a confession out of Ronan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo, this is my first fic. If you guys like it, I have a little bit more written and more to write, so let me know! Hope you like it. Set some time after BLLB. All characters & everything belong to Maggie.

“I’m in love with Blue,” Gansey said.

They were sitting in the Pig, Gansey in the driver’s seat, naturally, and Adam in the passenger seat. Gansey gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. He looked straight ahead, out at the parking lot of Monmouth Manufacturing. His face was neutral, polite. He had his Richard “Dick” Campbell Gansey III mask on, but his hands betrayed him. They became more and more tense with each passing second as he waited for a reply. Finally he snuck a look toward Adam. 

As soon as he saw Adam’s face, his Richard Gansey III mask fell. It was Gansey now, just Gansey. A Gansey who fell in love with Adam’s ex-girlfriend and felt deeply ashamed, not for the act of falling in love, but for keeping it from him. Gansey valued honesty in a way that Adam never seemed to. Adam was a natural liar, an imposter into worlds that were not his own. Aglionby, Cabeswater, Mrs. Gansey’s campaign parties. He knew the shame Gansey felt. 

Still, knowing Gansey felt bad didn’t make him any less angry. In fact, it might have fueled his rage even more. It wasn’t the kind of anger he normally experienced. That was a blinding white rage, inherited from Robert Parrish, that made the outer edges of his vision go black. This was different. It was a slow burn, something hateful in the pit of his stomach. Adam clenched and unclenched a fist slowly as he thought. 

The thing was, it wasn’t exactly a surprising statement, that Gansey was in love with Blue. Adam had noticed, even when he was dating Blue, their glances to each other. Their flirty banter (“They’re not flirting,” Adam had told himself countless times, “That’s just Gansey being charming Gansey. He can’t help it. He doesn’t know he’s doing it. Blue is with you. Blue is with you. Blue is with you.”). He could never shake the feeling, though, when it seemed that they naturally gravitated toward each other. This gravitation only got stronger once Adam made his deal with Cabeswater. He felt Blue spinning out of his orbit and into Gansey’s. Still, he denied, denied, denied. Then there was the way that Gansey’s face lit up whenever she entered the room. The way he said, “Jane!” joyfully, with his real smile that was reserved for a chosen few. 

It made sense that when they broke up, Blue had told Adam that it wasn’t him. And of course if it wasn’t him, it was Gansey.

No, these things all added up to Adam, but it still made him angry. It was another thing that made Gansey feel the need to tip-toe around him. Was Adam always that close to explosion that everything had to be kept secret, or be gently broken to him whenever the others decided it was the right time to tell him? 

“Adam,” Gansey begged quietly. “Please say something.”

“How long?” he asked calmly. It was hard, but he was tired of being a ticking time bomb. If he didn’t want to be treated like one, he had to stop losing it all the time. He needed his own Richard Gansey III mask. 

“A while.” Gansey let his hands drop from the steering wheel and he slumped in his seat, obviously relieved that Adam hadn’t flown off the handle. Gansey reached into his pocket to grab a mint leaf. He chewed it before he told Adam, “Nothing’s happened. Not really.”

“Of course not,” Adam said. “She can’t kiss you. I assume you’ve known that for a while, too.”

Gansey nodded his confirmation. Gansey knew about the curse long before Adam did. He knew it long before he had even put words to his feelings for Blue. 

“You would have though,” Adam continued softly. He stopped looking at Gansey and stared out at Monmouth. He saw Ronan’s dark window and wondered if he was asleep. Probably not. He was probably laying in his boxers in the dark, listening to the Murder Squash Song on repeat. “You would have kissed her a long time ago.”

“Yes.” Gansey’s voice was strangled with guilt, but he couldn’t lie. 

“So, what? Are you asking for my blessing to date her or something?” 

“No. Yes. Well, no, that’s not why I told you,” Gansey said. “It wasn’t right to keep it from you. I’m sorry.”

Adam didn’t say anything for a very long time. He had a million thoughts buzzing in his mind, and he was working to sort them out. And the longer he did that, the more… okay he felt. The fire in his stomach burned out, and he sat back. He was tired. He leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes for a minute.

When he opened his eyes again, he turned to Gansey, who was watching him anxiously. He often forgot how anxious he could be. How deeply he worried over his friends. He waited for Adam to say something, anything. For Gansey, even an explosion would be better than this silence. He felt he deserved the explosion, no doubt. He’d probably been beating himself up for months about this. He and Gansey were not always so different. 

“I’m glad you waited to tell me,” Adam said finally. 

“Why?”

“It hurts less now than it did before,” he said vaguely. His eyes found Ronan’s window. The light was on now. He turned back to Gansey.

Adam didn’t have it in him to be mad at Gansey for long, not when he had so little time left. Gansey would be gone before April rolled around. They still had to deal with the sleepers, they still had to help Cabeswater, they still had to find Glendower. And if they didn’t find Glendower and use the favor to save Gansey’s life… Well, he deserved a little bit of happiness before he died. If Blue was what made him happy, then who was Adam to deny Gansey that privilege? Adam had no claim over Blue. He just wanted for them to be happy before everything went to hell. 

“It’s okay, Gansey.”

“Are you sure?” Gansey’s thumb tugged at his bottom lip. 

“Positive,” Adam confirmed. “Now can we go inside? It’s freezing.”

The Pig’s heat didn’t work so well, and Adam didn’t exactly have an appropriate winter jacket, so the two boys hurriedly made their way inside Monmouth Manufacturing. The apartment was much warmer. Gansey headed straight for the kitchen-bathroom-laundry room, no doubt to call Blue, now that everything was out in the open. Adam knocked lightly at Ronan’s door. 

“What?” Ronan demanded from the other side.

“Can I come in?” he asked,

A few moments of silence. Then Ronan said gruffly, “Fine.”

Adam pushed the door open and closed it swiftly behind him. He found Ronan sitting on his bed, wearing sweatpants and a black muscle T, and Noah, fully corporeal but still smudgy, sitting on a large speaker across the room. They were throwing a basketball back and forth while Chainsaw looked on disdainfully from her cage. Adam watched them for a few seconds, then flopped himself down on the bed right next to Ronan. Ronan not-so-carefully watched Adam as their knees briefly knocked, waiting for him to scoot away. Adam didn’t. 

“What’s up, Parrish?” he asked as he caught the basketball.

“Did you two know about Blue and Gansey?” 

“Everyone knows,” Noah said. “You _knew_.”

“I suspected. There’s a difference between knowing and suspecting,” Adam replied. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Not my secret to tell, man,” said the ghost. 

“Who cares?” Ronan replied. He threw the ball to Noah, who failed to catch it. It bounced off the wall and hit Chainsaw’s cage. The raven squawked loudly and ruffled her feathers in rage. Noah bent down and picked up the ball while gently shushing Chainsaw. 

“I’m tired of secrets, is all.” He paused, sensing this line of conversation wasn’t going to go very far with Ronan and Noah. “Where’d you get a basketball from? You don’t play.”

“Where the fuck do you think, Parrish?”

Only Ronan Lynch could act like taking a basketball out of a dream was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It would have been more surprising if he had actually gone to a store and bought it. 

“Well, I’m going to sleep,” Noah said, walking over and handing the ball to Ronan instead of trying to throw it back.

“You’re dead. You don’t sleep.” 

“I might be dead, but at least I’m not _rude_.” With that, Noah was gone. 

Adam and Ronan sat in silence for a very long time.

Finally, Ronan said, “Let’s get out of here.”

Without waiting for a reply, he threw the basketball to the ground and left the room in typical Ronan Lynch fashion, storming out and slamming the door behind him, even though he expected Adam to follow. Adam did follow, of course, but his movement was more lethargic. He was tired. He had worked that morning, and then spent the afternoon and better half of the evening in Cabeswater with Gansey. According to his wristwatch, it was just past midnight. They had school the next morning. Adam, just for a second, dared to hope that Ronan might drive him back to St. Agnes, so he could get some sleep, but he knew better. Ronan, frequently driven to bouts of insomnia, didn’t seem to care much for Adam’s sleep schedule, especially on nights when he showed up at Adam’s doorstep, asking but never outright asking to sleep over. Adam never confessed that Ronan frequently kept him awake, with his tossing and turning. Truth be told, Adam was often too thrilled that Ronan Lynch, hater of all people and things, wanted to fall asleep next to him.

Adam slid into the passenger seat of the BMW, glad that its heat worked a lot better than the Pig’s. He noticed then that the Pig was gone. Gansey must have gone to see Blue. Ronan floored it out of the Monmouth parking lot before Adam had even buckled his seatbelt. 

“You hungry?” Ronan asked after a few minutes of driving.

“No,” Adam lied. He only had a chance to eat a thin ham sandwich at work, and he didn’t let Gansey buy him food. He was surprised, though, that his stomach hadn’t betrayed him by this point. Usually it was grumbling at this time of night. 

“Well, I am.” Ronan pulled into a convenience store. It was the only place in Henrietta open this late. He left the BMW running while he went inside. He emerged only minutes later, bag in hand. When he sat down in the car, he rummaged through the bag and pulled out a Coke and a bag of chips for Adam. 

Adam shook his head. “I told you, I’m not hungry.”

Ronan didn’t say anything. He just stared angrily at Adam until Adam finally relented and took the soda and chips from him. 

“Thanks,” Adam mumbled. 

Ronan grunted in response and started driving again. It became clear soon enough where they were headed. It was not St. Agnes, as Adam hoped. It was the road to the Barns. That had been Adam’s second guess. 

Adam studied Ronan as he drove. He was all sharp edges and darkness. A dark smile, dark eyes. He was smoldering with rage, some repressed, most not. He looked like on the outside what Adam frequently felt like on the inside. Perhaps the difference was that Ronan had the courage to show it. Or he just didn’t care. 

Adam finally looked away from Ronan as they pulled up to the Barns. He had been having a lot of thoughts about Ronan lately. A lot of feelings, actually. He thought things about Ronan he never imagined himself thinking about any boy, but especially not someone he used to think of merely as “Gansey’s angry friend who I have to put up with.”  
If Adam was being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure if he wanted Ronan, or wanted to be him. 

“Parrish,” Ronan said, as if he had said it a few times already. Maybe he had, Adam realized. He’d been too spaced out. The BMW was off and Ronan was outside his window. “Are you coming or not?”

Adam got out of the car and followed Ronan into the house. They made themselves comfortable in the living room, sitting side by side on the leather couch. Their knees were knocking again. Neither moved. 

“This is exactly what we were doing at Monmouth,” Adam commented after some time. 

“If you’re going to complain, you can start walking back to St. Agnes right now,” Ronan said. They were silent again, until Ronan finally asked, “Are you that upset about Gansey and Blue?”

Adam thought about it carefully before he answered. “No. I was. When the words first came out of Gansey’s mouth, I was really mad. I think I wanted to punch him. But the more I thought about it, the more okay I was.” He paused. “It was never going to be me and her.”

She had said it wasn’t going to be him when they broke up. That stung him a lot. Now he realized she had been right. They both tried. They both wanted so badly to fit together, when they first met, but it was always forced. It was always awkward. It was never right. 

“I thought you would’ve figured that out sooner. Aren’t you supposed to be a genius or something?”

“Maybe compared to you,” Adam said. He dared a look at Ronan and saw the other boy’s smirk. 

“Whatever, man. I’m still better at Latin.”

“When you show up,” Adam conceded. “Do you think we’re done?”

“Done with what? Cabeswater? Glendower?” 

“No. I’m talking about all the secrets,” he explained. “We’ve had so many. Noah being dead, you being the Greywaren, Gansey and Blue-”

“No. We’re not done with secrets, Parrish,” Ronan said. 

Adam wondered what else could possibly be a secret by now. Then he thought about Ronan. Ronan must think his secret is safe. He had had many over the years, but this was the one he was never going to tell anyone, let alone Adam. 

“How many do you think there are?” Adam asked. “How many do you have?”

“How many do _you_ have?” Ronan countered. 

“That depends on what you call a secret. It could be something I’ve never told you. But some things I’ve never told you because you’ve never asked.”

“Or it’s something I’ve never told you, that I never plan on telling you,” said Ronan.

“Right. How many of those?” he asked.

“One, I guess.”

“Okay. So tell me,” said Adam.

“Fuck off, Parrish,” he replied angrily. Ronan stood and was about to storm away, but Adam gripped his wrist and, with surprising strength, forced Ronan back down on the couch. Adam kept a hold on his wrist. 

“I’m done playing this game. I know, Lynch.”

“If you know, why do I have to tell you?” Steam was rolling off of Ronan in waves. 

“Sorry, I don’t know. I suspect.”

“‘There’s a difference between knowing and suspecting,’” Ronan mocked his statement from earlier in Adam’s slow Henrietta drawl. 

“Lynch.” Adam gripped Ronan’s wrist even tighter. 

“Fuck, Parrish. Why can’t you let me just have this? You don’t understand. Once it’s out, there’s no going back.”

“I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward.”

Adam let that statement hang in the air for a while. Slowly he let go of Ronan’s wrist. 

Ronan raised his wrist to his mouth and chewed at his leather bands for a while. Finally he let his wrist drop and stared Adam straight in the eyes.

“I like you, Parrish,” he said. There was a challenge in Ronan’s eyes. For what, Adam couldn’t tell. Perhaps he was daring Adam to laugh at him, or hit him, or say, “That’s not what I meant, can you take me home now?” 

Adam did none of these things, of course. He merely took a few slow, deep breaths. There was a difference between knowing this - no, suspecting this - and hearing it said out loud. But he liked it. He liked the way Ronan said it, and how he looked at him as he said it. He liked the way Ronan was starting to worry about his lack of reply. Ronan didn’t look worried to the untrained eye. His worry shined through in his anger, and he could tell Ronan was getting angry. His shoulders tensed and his fists clenched and he bit the side of his cheek.

“Well?” Ronan demanded. 

“Calm down, Lynch. I like you, too,” Adam replied with the faint hint of a smile.

Ronan stared at him for a few moments, as if trying to figure out if Adam was making fun of him or not. Adam held his gaze, assuring him that, yes, he did in fact like Ronan for some ungodly reason. The other boy relaxed then. He slumped back against the couch and knocked knees with Adam again.

“What now?” asked Ronan. 

Adam gently took Ronan’s hand and intertwined their fingers. “Let’s go on a date.”

“Right now?”

“No. Tomorrow night. Right now you need to drive me back to St. Agnes, because I’m exhausted,” Adam said.

But Ronan didn’t drive Adam back to St. Agnes right then. He sat for a while, staring at Adam’s hand. It wasn’t the first time he had noticed Adam’s hand, but it was the first time he got to see Adam’s hand locked in his own. He wanted to milk that for all it was worth, and to Ronan Lynch, it was worth a lot.

It was almost morning by the time Adam returned to his shabby little apartment over St. Agnes. He was different, changed. Not in the way that Cabeswater had changed him. No, this change was smoother, sweeter. This change had everything to do with Ronan Lynch.

If he had known - if he had gone to a psychic earlier in that day and they’d said, “In 12 hours, your best friend will be confessing his love for your ex-girlfriend and you’ll be angry, but it’ll be okay, because 2 hours later, you’ll be confessing your feelings for your other best friend and holding his hand,” he might not have believed it. Not because it wasn’t plausible, but because when he woke up that morning, he hadn’t expected anything like that. It didn’t seem like a day for confessions, but it had been.

No, it had been a night for confessions. 

*

Gansey sat back against the refrigerator. He briefly considered the thought of moving it someplace more sanitary, then reasoned that there was never anything in there anyway. They ate at Nino’s more often than not. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed the number for 300 Fox Way. He was not surprised when Blue answered almost immediately. It was well after midnight. She was probably expecting his call.

“Gansey,” she breathed into the phone. “Come pick me up. It’s an emergency.”

“I’m on my way,” he said. He ended the call and practically ran out the door of Monmouth Manufacturing. If Blue needed him, he would be there. Gansey didn’t normally speed. In fact, Ronan often said he drove like an old man. But tonight Gansey pushed the speed limit and arrived at 300 Fox Way in record time.

He was about to run up the house when instead Blue came running down to the Pig. She threw herself into the passenger seat and yelled, “Drive! Hurry!”

He drove, he hurried.

“Blue, what’s wrong?” he demanded, when they were safely down the street. “And where do you want me to go? The police station? The hospital?” 

“What? Oh! No,” she said. “Anywhere is fine.”

Gansey frowned. “I thought you said it was an emergency.”  


“It was. Crazy wouldn’t stop singing at me.”

Crazy meant Gwenllian, Glendower’s illegitimate daughter. While Gansey agreed that Gwenllian’s singing was irritating, he would hardly constitute it an emergency.

“Oh, Jane,” he sighed.

“I should be asking what’s wrong with you,” she said. 

“Is my melancholy showing?”

“No, what’s showing is your obnoxiously bright shirt,” Blue retorted. He wore an orange polo underneath his winter coat, and Blue could never resist making fun of his shirts. Or his boat shoes, which he was also sporting this evening.

Gansey flashed her a smile. It was humored but still tight. They didn’t speak until the Pig made its way high up into the mountains of Henrietta. This was where they could talk. This is where they could be themselves. Just Blue and Gansey, Gansey and Blue.

He kept the Pig running even when he parked near the treeline of a wood. The Camaro’s heat didn’t do much, but he didn’t want Blue to be cold. For such a sensible creature, she could wear such not-sensible clothing. He loved her creative get-ups, her torn shirts and strangely patterned leggings and knitted gloves, he really did. But Gansey couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that Blue - sensible Blue- had left the house in the middle of the night, in January, wearing nothing more than a crocheted sweater for a jacket. 

At the first sign of a shiver running through her body, he cavalierly removed his own coat and draped it around her shoulders. She smiled gratefully at him.

“I told Adam.” 

She raised an eyebrow. “Told him what, exactly?”

Gansey tugged at his lower lip. He had confessed to Adam that he was in love with Blue. The thing was, he hadn’t confessed that much to Blue herself yet. Yes, of course, Blue knew that he had feelings for her. But they hadn’t yet broached the in love subject. Gansey felt like a coward, that he could feel it and he could tell Adam, but he couldn’t just say it to her.

“About us,” he replied vaguely.

“Ah. How did that go?”

“I’m… not sure,” Gansey confessed. “He seemed really angry at first. He didn’t even speak. And then… Then he said it was okay.”

“Oh. So then it’s okay.”

“I just feel so terrible,” he said.

“I know.” Blue grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “But Adam wouldn’t say it’s okay if it wasn’t.”

“You’re right. He has no qualms about fighting with me.”

“Nobody has any qualms fighting someone who says words like _qualms_ ,” Blue retorted. 

Gansey smiled his real smile and leaned in toward her. He gently cupped the back of her neck and pulled her as close to him as she could possibly get without their lips touching.

Damn this curse, he thought.

She traced his jawline gently with her small fingers. Her breath was steady and hot on his skin. Their cheeks pressed against each other in a dance, an embarrassing yet strangely sensual attempt at intimacy without locking lips. Gansey loved it and yet hated it. 

“Jesus, Jane,” he breathed softly. He moved his lips close to her ear, still cupping her neck, to keep her right there. “I would give anything to kiss you.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she whispered.

That was true. There was only one thing he could give to kiss her, and that was his life. 

“Maybe that will be our favor from Glendower,” he said. 

Blue pulled away from him very abruptly. 

“Jane?”

She didn’t say anything. She merely crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the window of the Pig.

“Jane, look at me,” he said. “Was it what I said? Listen, I know we need to use Glendower’s favor to bring Noah back to life. I know that. I just - I just wish I could kiss you, that’s all.”

Blue took a deep, shaky breath and finally looked at him. Something told him that that wasn’t why she was upset. But Blue was nothing if but a mystery, and she would not tell him what was bothering her unless she wanted to.

He reached into his pocket to retrieve two mint leaves, one for himself and one for her. He placed it on her tongue without ceremony. 

“Do you know what Gwenllian was singing at me?” she said suddenly.

“No. What?”

“The murder squash song. _That bastard taught it to her_ ,” Blue said. She was very angry about it, clearly. “I don’t know how, or when, or where, but Ronan taught that psychopath the most annoying song in the known universe-”

“Oh, no,” Gansey said, running a hand through his hair. “No, no, no. That won’t do. Is it possible to un-teach someone something?” 

“You should have heard the things Calla was shouting at her when I left,” said Blue. “If Calla isn’t arrested for murder by the time I get home, I will be very surprised.”

“Arrested for murdering a centuries-old Welsh princess/witch who no one besides us knows is currently alive?” 

Blue shrugged. “I’m sure if there’s a body, there’s handcuffs.”

“Calla wouldn’t leave a body. Of that, I am certain,” Gansey replied. He paused to consider the merits of being a psychic murderer. If one could know the police’s next move before even the police themselves knew their next move, surely one could always stay one step ahead of them and ensure that oneself never actually got caught. 

This thought frightened him, because Calla was a very gifted psychic with a very short temper. 

Blue sighed in the seat next to him. “Mom will probably want me home soon. It is a school night.”

Gansey raised an eyebrow. “I thought you snuck out.”

“I couldn’t because Crazy was keeping up the entire house. So I told Mom you were coming to pick me up for a bit. She seemed a little jealous, to be honest.”

“Your mom should just give her one of those teas she’s always making,” Gansey suggested, pulling the Pig onto the road. “That would shut her up rather quickly.”

Blue laughed at this. Maura Sargent’s teas were notoriously horrific. The only person who ever seemed to enjoy them was Malory. 

They were silent for the rest of the trip back to 300 Fox Way. It was a comfortable silence, a companionable silence. The kind of silence that only came when he was with Blue, or Ronan, or Adam, or Noah. They didn’t need to talk. There wasn’t a pressing urge to fill every space, every second, with noise. They merely basked in each other’s company. 

When they pulled in front of the Fox Way house, they sat in the car for a few minutes. Blue watched the house with apprehension. She didn’t want to go in if Gwenllian was still up, singing the murder squash song, and Gansey could hardly blame her. Finally she shrugged out of his coat and handed it over to him. 

“Thanks,” she said. She started to climb out of the car.

“Wait. Blue,” he said. At the sound of her real name, she fell back into the Pig and closed the door. 

“Yes, Dick?”

“Blue,” he said seriously. There was very little he hated more than being called Dick, especially by Blue. 

“Sorry, couldn’t help it,” she said with a smile. She looked, Gansey thought, nervous. As if she knew what Gansey was about to say.

Maybe she does, he thought. She may not be psychic, but the literal rest of her family is. Maybe Maura or Orla saw his confession and told her.  
He put a mint leaf in his mouth and waited for his heart to still, but it didn’t. He’d have to do this, then, with his mind abuzz and his hands shaking and his heart racing a thousand miles a minute. 

This was not very like Richard “Dick” Campbell Gansey the Third. This was not very like Gansey. This was Gansey in love, and this was horrifying.

Gansey wondered if he’d rather take on some hornets right now. He decided probably not. This was probably easier than hornets and the inevitable death that would accompany them. 

“Blue, I’m in love with you,” Gansey said. Despite his anxiety, his voice was very sure. It was certain. Richard Gansey was very much in love with Blue Sargent, and he wanted her to know it beyond a doubt.

A thousand different emotions flashed across her face in the moments following, like fast-forwarding through a whole movie in a matter of seconds. He noted surprise as one of them, which meant that no one had told her, which was good. There was a smile, there were tears, there was fear, there was anger, there was happiness, pure happiness, and a little breathlessness. This was one of the things he loved about Blue Sargent. She had such a colorful range of emotions that could be called on whenever they were needed. The effect was always immediate. 

He waited for her response with a practiced patience. Patience was an important trait in the Gansey family. Though his heart still pounded and he desperately needed to hear her answer, he couldn’t betray his upbringing entirely. He waited with his hands folded neatly in his lap, studying her face. 

It felt like forever, but she eventually did respond.

Blue leaned in close to him, like they were about to do their kiss-but-not-kiss thing. 

She whispered, “I love you, too.”

Gansey breathed a sigh of relief.

She pulled away and said, “Now, my mom is probably in there freaking out about this, so I should go and calm her down.”

Gansey had a hard time imagining Maura Sargent freaking out about anything, but he said goodnight to Blue and watched her run inside anyway. Gansey drove home to Monmouth Manufacturing, with the biggest grin on his face. If Blue saw it, she would call him an idiot. But he didn’t care.

He felt better, lighter, after his confession. Probably the better word was declaration. He felt better after his declaration.

For once, Gansey slept, and he slept well.


End file.
